GEOFFREY ANNERSLEY ARRIVES
There were few passengers alighting from the south bound train from
Canada. Larry Holiday had no difficulty in picking out Geoffrey Annersley
among these, a tall young man, wearing the British uniform and supporting
himself with a walking stick. His face was lean and bronzed and lined,
the face of a man who has seen things which kill youth and laughter and
yet a serene face too as if its owner had found that after all nothing
mattered very much if you looked it square in the eye.
Larry went to the stranger at once.
"Captain Annersley?" he asked. "I am Laurence Holiday."
The captain set down his bag, leaned on his stick, deliberately
scrutinized the other man. Larry returned the look frankly. They were of
nearly the same age but any one seeing them would have set the Englishman
as at least five years the senior of the young doctor. Geoffrey Annersley
had been trained in a stern school. A man does not wear a captain's bars
and four wound stripes for nothing.
Then the Englishman held out his hand with a pleasant and unexpectedly
boyish smile.
"So you are Larry," he said. "Your brother sent me to you."
"Ted! You have seen him?" For a minute Larry forgot who Geoffrey
Annersley was, forgot Ruth, forgot himself, remembered only Ted and
gave his guest a heartier handshake than he had willed for his "Kid"
brother's sake.
"Yes, I was with him day before yesterday and the night before that. He
was looking jolly well and sent all kinds of greetings to you all. See
here, Doctor Holiday, I have no end of things to say to you. Can we go
somewhere and talk?"
"My car is outside. You will come up to the house will you not? We are
all expecting you." Larry tried hard to keep his voice quiet and
emotionless. Not for anything would he have had this gallant soldier
suspect how his knees were trembling.
"Delighted," bowed the captain suavely and permitted Larry to take his
bag and lead the way to the car. Nothing more was said until the two men
were seated and the car had left the station yard.
"I am afraid I should have made my wire a bit more explicit," observed
the captain turning to Larry. "My wife says I am too parsimonious with my
words in telegrams--a British trait possibly." He spoke deliberately and
his keen eyes studied his companion's face as he made the casual remark
which set Larry's brain reeling. "See here, Holiday, I'm a blunt brute. I
don't know how to break things gently to people. But I am here to tell
you if you care to know that Elinor Ruth Farringdon is no more married
than you are unless she is married to you. That was her mother's wedding
ring. Lord, man, do you always drive a car like this? I've been all but
killed once this year and I don't care to repeat the experiment."
Larry grinned, flushed, apologized and moderated the speed of his motor.
He wondered that he could drive at all. He felt strangely light as if he
were stripped of his body and were nothing but spirit.
"Do you mind if we drive about a bit and talk things over before I see
Elinor--Ruth, as you call her? I'm funking that a little though I've
been trying ever since your brother told me the story to get used to
the idea of her being, well not quite right, you know. But I can't
stick it somehow."
"She is all right, perfectly normal every way except that she had
forgotten things." Larry's voice was faintly indignant. He resented
anybody's implying that Ruth was queer, unbalanced in any way. She
wasn't. She was absolutely sane, as sane as Captain Annersley himself,
considerably more sane than Larry Holiday could take oath he was at
this moment.
"Good heavens! Isn't that enough?" groaned Annersley almost equally
indignant. "You forget or rather you don't know all she has forgotten. I
know. I was brought up with her. Her father was my uncle and guardian. We
played together, had the same tutor, rode the same ponies, got into the
same jolly old scrapes. Why, Elinor's like my own sister, man. I can't
swallow her forgetting me and her brother Rod and all the rest as easily
as you seem to do. It--well, it's the limit as you say in the states."
The captain wiped his forehead on which great drops of perspiration stood
in spite of the January chill in the air. There was agitation, suppressed
vehemence in his tone.
"I suppose it is natural that you should feel that way." Larry spoke
thoughtfully as he turned the car away from the Hill in response to his
guest's request that he be permitted to postpone meeting Elinor Ruth
Farringdon a little while. "The remembering part hasn't bothered me so
much. Maybe I wasn't very keen on having her remember. Maybe I was afraid
she would remember too much," he added coloring a little.
The frown on his companion's stern young face melted at that. The
frank, boyish smile appeared again. He liked Larry Holiday none the less
for his lack of pretense. He understood all that. The younger Holiday
had taken pains to make things perfectly clear to him. He knew precisely
what the young doctor was afraid of and why in case Elinor Farringdon's
memory returned.
"My uncle thinks and I think too that her memory will come back now that
it has the external stimulus to waken it," Larry continued. "I shouldn't
be surprised if seeing you would give the necessary impetus. In fact I am
counting on that very thing happening, hoping for it with all my might.
That was one of the reasons I was glad to have you come. Please believe
that I should have been glad even if your coming had made her remember
she was your wife. Of course her recovery is the main thing. The rest
is--a side issue."
"A jolly important side issue I take it for her and for you. I'm not a
stranger, Doctor Holiday. I am Elinor Ruth Farringdon's cousin, in her
brother's absence I represent her family and in that capacity I would
like to say before I am a minute older that what you and the rest of you
Holidays have done for Elinor passes anything I know of for sheer
fineness and generosity. I'm not a man of words. War would have knocked
them out of me if I had been but when I remember that you not only saved
Elinor's life but took care of her afterward when she apparently hadn't a
friend in the world--well, there isn't anything I can say but thank you
and tell you that if there is ever anything I can do in return for you or
yours you have only to ask. Neither Elinor nor I can ever repay you. It
is the sort of thing that is--unpayable." And again the captain wiped his
perspiring brow. He was deeply moved and emotion went hard with his
Anglo-Saxon temperament.
"We did nothing but what anybody would have been glad to do. If there
are any thanks coming they are chiefly due to my uncle and his wife. But
we don't any of us want thanks. We love Ruth. Please forget the rest. We
would rather you would."
The captain nodded quick approval. He had been told Americans were
boasters, given to Big-Itis. But either people got the Americans wrong or
these Holidays were an exception to the general run. He remembered that
other young Holiday whom he had met rather intimately in the Canadian
camp. There had been no side there either. His modesty had been one of
his chief charms. And here was the brother quietly putting aside credit
for a course of conduct which was simply immense in its quixotic
generosity. He liked these Holidays. There was something rather
magnificent about their simplicity--something almost British he thought.
"That is all very well," he made answer. "I won't talk about it if you
prefer but you will pardon me if I don't forget that you saved my
cousin's life and looked after her when she was in a desperately unhappy
situation and her own people seemed to have utterly deserted her. And I
consider my running into your brother at camp one of the sheerest pieces
of good luck I've had these many days on all counts."
"How did it happen?" asked Larry.
"I was doing some recruiting work in the vicinity and they asked me to
say a few words to the lads in training. I did. Your brother was there
and lost no time in getting in touch with me when he heard who I was. And
jolly pleased I was to hear his story--all of it."
The speaker smiled at his companion.
"I mean that, Larry Holiday. Elinor and I were kid sweethearts. We used
to swear we were going to get married when we grew up. That was when she
was eight and I a man of twelve or so. I gave her the locket which made
some of the trouble as a sort of hostage for the future. We called her
Ruth in those days. It was her own fancy to change it to Elinor later.
She thought it more grown up and dignified I remember. Then I went back
to England to school. I didn't see her again until we were both grown up
and then I married her best friend with her blessing and approval. But
that is another story. Just now I am trying to tell you that I am ready
to congratulate my cousin with all my heart if it happens that you want
to marry her as your brother seems to think."
"There is no doubt about what I want," said Larry grimly. "Whether it is
what she wants is another matter. We haven't been exactly in a position
to discuss marriage."
"I understand. I'm beastly sorry to have been such an infernal dog in the
manger unwittingly. The only thing I can do to make, up is to give my
blessing and wish you best of luck in your wooing. Shall we shake on it,
Larry Holiday, and on the friendship I hope you and I are going to have?"
And with a cordial man to man grip there was cemented a friendship which
was to last as long as they both lived.
To relate briefly the links of the story some of which Larry Holiday now
heard as the car sped over the smooth, frost hardened roads which the
open winter had left unusually snowless and clean. Geoffrey Annersley had
been going his careless, happy go lucky way as an Oxford undergraduate
when the sudden firing of a far off shot had startled the world and made
war the one inevitable fact. The young man had enlisted promptly and had
been in practically continuous service of one sort or another ever since.
He had gone through desperate fighting, been four times wounded, and was
now at last definitely eliminated from active service by a semi-paralyzed
leg, the result of his last visit to "Blighty." He had been invalided the
previous spring and had been sent to Australia on a recruiting mission.
Here he had renewed his acquaintance with his cousins whom he had not
seen for years and promptly fell in love with and married pretty Nancy
Hallinger, his cousin Elinor's chum.
The speedy wooing accomplished as well as the recruiting job which was
dispatched equally expeditiously and thoroughly Geoffrey prepared to
return to France to get in some more good work against the Huns while his
wife planned to enter Red Cross service as a nurse for which she had been
in training for some time. Roderick had entered the Australian air
service and was already in Flanders where he had the reputation of being
one of the youngest and most reckless aviators flying which was saying
considerable.
It was imperative that some arrangement be made for Elinor who obviously
could not be left alone in Sydney. It was decided in family conclave that
she should go to America and accept the often proffered hospitality of
her aunt for a time at least. A cable to this effect had been dispatched
to Mrs. Wright which as later appeared never reached that lady as she was
already on her way to England and died there shortly after.
Geoffrey had been exceedingly reluctant to have his young cousin take the
long journey alone though she had laughed at his fears and his wife had
abetted her in her disregard of possible disastrous consequences, telling
him that women no longer required wrapping in tissue paper. The war had
changed all that.
At his insistence however Ruth had finally consented to wear her mother's
wedding ring as a sort of shadowy protection. He had an idea that the
small gold band, being presumptive evidence of an existing male guardian
somewhere in the offing might serve to keep away the ill intentioned or
over bold from his lovely little heiress cousin about whom he worried to
no small degree.
They had gone their separate ways, he to the fierce fighting of May,
nineteen hundred and sixteen, she to her long journey and subsequent
strange adventures. At first no one had thought it unnatural that they
heard nothing from Elinor. Letters went easily astray those days.
Geoffrey was weeks without news even from his wife and poor Roderick
was by this time beyond communication of any kind, his name labeled
with that saddest of all tags--missing. It was not until Geoffrey was
out of commission with that last worst knock out, lying insensible,
more dead than alive in a hospital "somewhere in France" that the
others began to realize that Elinor had vanished utterly from the ken
of all who knew her. Some one who knew her by sight had chanced to see
her in California and had noted the wedding ring, hence the
"unsubstantiated rumor" of her marriage in San Francisco, a rumor which
Nancy half frantic over her husband's desperate illness was the only
person who was in a position to explain.
When Geoffrey came slowly back to the land of the living it was to learn
that his cousin Roderick was still reported missing and that Elinor was
even more sadly and mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth in
spite of all effort to discover her fate. It had been a tragic coming
back for the sick man. But an Englishman is hard to down and gradually he
got back health and a degree of hope and happiness. There would be no
more fighting for him but the War Department assured him there were
plenty of other ways in which he could serve the cause and he had
readily placed himself at their disposal for the recruiting work in which
he had already demonstrated his power to success in Australia.
Which brings us to the Canadian training camp and Ted Holiday. Captain
Annersley had been asked as he had told Larry to speak to the boys. He
had done so, given a little straight talk of what lay ahead of them and
what they were fighting for, bade them get in a few extra licks for him
since he was out of it for good, done for, "crocked." In conclusion he
had begged them give the Huns hell. It was all he asked of them and from
the look of them he jolly well knew they would do it.
While he was speaking he was aware all the time of a tall, blue-eyed
youth who stood leaning against a post with a kind of nonchalant grace.
The boy's pose had been indolent but his eyes had been wide awake,
earnest, responsive. Little by little the captain found himself talking
directly to the lad. What he was saying might be over the heads of some
of them but not this chap's. He got you as the Americans say. He had the
vision, would go wherever the speaker could take him. One saw that.
Afterwards the boy had sought out the recruiter to ask if by any chance
he knew a girl named Elinor Ruth Farringdon. It had been rather a
tremendous moment for both of them. Each had plenty to say that the other
wanted to hear. But the full story had to wait. Corporal Holiday couldn't
run around loose even talking to a distinguished British officer. There
would have to be special dispensation for that and special dispensations
take time in an army world. It would be forthcoming however--to-morrow.
In the meantime Geoffrey Annersley had heard enough to want to know a
great deal more and thought he might as well make some inquiries on his
own. He wanted to find out who these American Holidays were, one of whom
had apparently saved his cousin Elinor's life and all of whom had, one
concluded, been amazingly kind to her though the blue-eyed boy had
gracefully made light of that side of the thing in the brief synopsis of
events he had had time to give to the Englishman. The captain had taken a
fancy to the narrator and was not averse to beginning his investigation
as to the Holiday family with the young corporal himself.
Accordingly he tackled the boy's commanding officer, a young colonel with
whom he chanced to be dining. The colonel was willing to talk and
Geoffrey Annersley discovered that young Holiday was rather by way of
being a top-notcher. He had enlisted as a private only a short time ago
but had been shot speedily into his corporalship. Time pressed. Officers
were needed. The boy was officer stuff. He wouldn't stay a corporal. If
all went well he would go over as a sergeant.
"We put him through though, just at first handled him rather nasty," the
colonel admitted with a reminiscent twinkle. "We do put the Americans
through somehow, though it isn't that we have any grudge against 'em. We
haven't. We like 'em--most of 'em and we have to admit it's rather decent
of them to be here at all when they don't have to. All the same we give
'em an extra twist of the discipline crank on general principles just to
see what they are made of. We found out mighty quick with this youngster.
He took it all and came back for more with a 'sir,' and a salute and a
devilish debonair, you-can't-down-me kind of grin that would have
disarmed a Turk."
"He doesn't look precisely meek to me," Annersley had said remembering
the answering flash he had caught in those blue eyes when he was begging
the boys to get in an extra lick against the Huns for his sake.
"Meek nothing! He has more spirit than any cub we've had to get into
shape this many a moon. It isn't that. It is just that he has the right
idea, had it from the start however he came by it. You know what it is,
captain. It is obedience, first, last and all the time, the will to be
willed. A soldier's job is to do what he is told whether he likes it or
not, whether it is his job or not, whether it makes sense or not, whether
he gets his orders from a man he looks up to and respects or whether he
gets them from a low down cur that he knows perfectly well isn't fit to
black his boots--none of that makes any difference. It is up to him to do
what he is told and he does it without a kick if he's wise. Young Holiday
is wise. He'd had his medicine sometime. One sees that. I don't know why
he dropped down on us like a shooting star the way he did, some college
fiasco I understand. He doesn't talk about himself or his affairs though
he is a frank outspoken youngster in other ways. But there was a look in
his eyes when he came to us that most boys of twenty don't have, thank
the Lord! And it is that look or what is behind it that has made him ace
high here. That boy struck bottom somewhere and struck it hard. I'll bet
my best belt on that."
This interested Geoffrey Annersley. He thought he understood what the
colonel meant. There was something in Ted Holiday's eyes which betrayed
that he had already been under fire somehow. He had seen it himself.
"He is as smart as they make 'em," went on the colonel. "Quick as a flash
to think and to see and to act, never loses his head. And he's a wonder
with the men, jollies 'em along when they are grousing or homesick, sets
'em grinning from ear to ear when they are down-hearted, has a pat on the
shoulder for this one and a jeer for that one. Old and young they are
all crazy about him. They'd go anywhere he led. I tell you he's the stuff
that will take 'em over the top and make the boches feel cold in the pit
of their fat tumtums when they see him coming. Lord, but the uselessness
of it though! He'll get killed. His kind always does. They are always in
front. They are made that way. Can't help it. Sometimes they do come
through though." The colonel flashed a quick admiring glance at his guest
who had also been the kind that was always in front and yet had somehow
by the grace of something come through in spite of the hazards he had run
and the deaths he had all but died. "You are a living witness to that
little fact," he added. "Lord love us! It's all in the game anyway and a
man can die but once."
The next day Corporal Holiday was given a brief leave of absence from
camp at the request of the distinguished British officer. Together the
two went over the strange story of Elinor Ruth Farringdon and the
Holidays' connection with the later chapters thereof. They decided not to
write to the Hill as Annersley was planning to go to Boston next day
whence he was to return soon to England his mission accomplished, and
could easily stop over in Dunbury on his way and set things right in
person, perhaps even by his personal presence renew Ruth's memory of
things she had forgotten.
All through the pleasant dinner hour Ted kept wishing he could get the
captain to talking about himself and his battle experiences and had no
idea at all that he himself was being shrewdly studied as they talked.
"Good breeding, good blood-quality," the captain summed up. "If he is a
fair sample of young America then young America is a bit of all right."
And if he is a fair sample of the Holiday family then Elinor had indeed
fallen into the best of hands. Praise be! He wondered more than once what
the young-corporal's own story was, what was the nature of the fiasco
which had driven him into the Canadian training camp and what was behind
that unboyish look which came now and then into his boyish eyes.
Later during the intimate evening over their cigarettes both had their
curiosity gratified. Captain Annersley was moved to relate some of his
hair breadth escapes and thrilling moments to an alert and hero
worshiping listener. And later still Ted too waxed autobiographical in
response to some clever baiting of which he was entirely unaware though
he did wonder afterward how he had happened to tell the thing he had kept
most secret to an entire stranger. It was an immense relief to the boy to
talk it all out. It would never haunt him again in quite the same way now
he had once broken the barriers of his reserve. Geoffrey Annersley served
his purpose for Ted as well as Larry Holiday.
Annersley was immensely interested in the confession. It matched very
well he thought with that other story of a gallant young Holiday to whom
his cousin Elinor owed so much in more than one way. They were a queer
lot these Holidays. They had the courage of their convictions and tilted
at windmills right valiantly it seemed.
And then he fell to talking straight talk to Ted Holiday, saying things
that only a man who has lived deeply can say with any effect. He urged
the boy not to worry about that smash of his. It was past history, over
and done with. He must look ahead not back and be thankful he had come
out as well as he had.
"There is just one other thing I want to say," he added. "You think you
have had your lesson. Maybe it is enough but you'll find it a jolly lot
easier to slip up over there than it is at home. You lose your sense of
values when there is death and damnation going all around you, get to
feeling you have a right to take anything that comes your way to even it
up. Anyway I felt that way until I met the girl I wanted to marry. Then
the rest looked almighty different. I've given Nancy the best I had to
give but it wasn't good enough. She deserved more than I could give her.
That is plain speaking, Holiday. Men say war excuses justify anything. It
doesn't do anything of the sort. Some day you will be wanting to marry a
girl yourself. Don't let anything happen in this next year over there
that you will regret for a life-time. That is a queer preachment and I'm
a jolly rotten preacher. But somehow I felt I had to say it. You can
remember it or forget it as you like."
Ted lit another cigarette, looked up straight into Geoffrey Annersley's
war lined face.
"Thank you," he said. "I think I'll remember it. Anyway I appreciate your
saying it to me that way."
The subject dropped then, went back to war and how men feel on the edge
of death, of the unimportance of death anyway.